Medical tubing such as a catheter is employed in the art to deliver treatment to the tissue of a subject from outside the body. Medical tubing often needs to be in held in place for a long period of time e.g. days to weeks. For example, a drainage tube is commonly employed after an operation to remove a tumour, which tube prevents fluid build up from the section site. The implanted tube exits the body and is secured at the exit point by a stitch that wraps around the tubing and which hooks the adjoining skin. Another example of a medical tube is a catheter tube implanted in a subject that provides passage for a brachytherapy source wire (i.e. for example an elongated wire disposed with a radioactive tip for high dose rate or pulsed dose rate brachytherapy). The catheter needs to be held accurately in place for up to a number of weeks, so that the radiologist can provide through the tubing, brachytherapy sessions across several intervals, and to the same site of treatment. In an alternative configuration, the radiation oncologist may load the catheter tube after positioning at the described location with radioactive wires or seeds (Palladium 103, Iodine 125) both of which will remain in place for several days or weeks. Another example of a medical tube is a catheter tube implanted in a subject that provides passage for a wave guide allowing to treat an organ interstitially with light and photosensitizing agents (photodynamic therapy) or with laser light (interstitial hyperthermia with infrared light). The surgeon will typically suture the proximal end of the medical tubing as it exits the body to the surrounding skin, using a stitch that is wrapped one or more times around the tubing which hooks the adjoining skin.
Because the tubing is typically made from or coated with a friction resistive material to enable passage through the body, the stitch does not adequately grip the tubing. Since the tubing cannot be punctured by the needle, the stitch may only wrap around the exterior wall, which attachment loosens with time. As a consequence movements by the tubing in the longitudinal direction are common during wearing by the subject i.e. the tubing moves further out from or further into the body. Critically, for brachytherapy or light based applications, the position of the tubing can change over time; as a result, the precise location for delivery of brachytherapy or light can no longer be ascertained with confidence.
The prior art, therefore, demands a way to securely prohibit the medical tubing from moving in and out of the body and possibly attach medical tubing to body tissue using a suture, which allows the physician to place the stitch at one or more points along the tubing without damaging the integrity of the tubing lumen.